Equipping & Encouraging Sunday School and Small Group Leaders

Tuesday Teaching Tip: Less is More

Dear Sunday School Teacher,

I have been appointed by the class to write this letter to you. We want to start by saying how much we appreciate the way you study in order to teach us the Bible. You know an awful lot about the Scriptures as evidenced by the way you wax eloquently each week. Sometimes the words you use are hard for us to understand, but that’s OK.

We have just one bone to pick with you, if you’d allow us. You know that we have our favorite place to sit in the morning worship service. We’d sure like to be dismissed from class on time to get to the worship center and “stake a claim” on our favorite pew. But most Sundays you keep talking and teaching and we’re late to the worship service.

So here is our suggestion, dear Teacher. As you study throughout the week and learn all kinds of interesting facts about the Bible that you feel compelled to pass on to us, please remember that there is only so much we can remember each week. We don’t believe that the people who created our Bible study curriculum really intended for you to cover every jot and tittle in the lesson passage we study each week. Instead, it’s OK with us if you wanted to focus on fewer verses in order to give us more time to talk and discuss what they meant to the original hearers, and what they mean to us today. It might even be good if we could discuss how we might go about actually living them out during the week. We’d really like that.

So you have our permission as a group to cover a smaller portion of the lesson, to do so on time, and to help us more fully understand and obey the Scripture. We give you permission to leave some of what you studied and learned “on the cutting room floor” for use at some future Bible study. We don’t want you to feel that you have to tell us everything you learned this past week as you prepared to teach our group.